Fan Noise

In the past years, users would accept everything just to get more performance. Nowadays, this has changed and users have become more aware of the fan noise and power consumption of their graphic cards.
In order to properly test the fan noise that a card emits, we use the Bruel & Kjaer 2236 sound level meter (~$4,000) which has the measurement range and accuracy we are looking for.


The tested graphics card was installed in a system that was completely passively cooled. That is, passive PSU, passive CPU cooler, and passive cooling on the motherboard and on a solid state drive.
This setup allows us to eliminate secondary noise sources and test only the video card. To be more compliant with standards like DIN 45635 (we are not claiming to be fully DIN 45635 certified), the measurement was conducted at 100 cm of distance and 160 cm over the floor. The ambient background noise level in the room was well below 20 dBA for all measurements. Please note that the dBA scale is not linear but logarithmic. 40 dBA is not twice as loud as 20 dBA. A 3 dBA increase results in double the sound pressure. The human hearing perception is a bit different and it is generally accepted that a 10 dBA increase doubles the perceived sound level. The 3D load noise levels were tested with a stressful game, not Furmark.

Idle fan noise of the Gigabyte SOC is not impressive. The card runs noisier than both the AMD HD 7970 GHz Edition and the HD 7970 reference design. Given the low idle temperature of 46°C there is no reason Gigabyte couldn't have optimized their fan speed settings a bit more.

Surprisingly, under load the card is quieter than both HD 7970 designs, but still far from a quiet experience. With 44 dbA it is noisier than the NVIDIA GTX 680 and GTX 690. We have also seen custom board designs for both NVIDIA and AMD that provide similar performance at a fraction of the noise level.